The Jury: Murder Trial viewers angry youngest juror being 'patronised'
Viewers of Channel 4's reality court series are annoyed a teenage juror's opinion is being dismissed.
What did you miss?
The Jury: Murder Trial viewers were annoyed to see one juror being shrugged off as too immature to take seriously because he is the youngest person in the cast.
Channel 4's reality series sees a real-life murder trial re-enacted in a court in front of two separate juries, who do not know of each other's existence, to test whether they come to the same verdict in a case against a man accused of murdering his wife with a hammer.
But despite the programme's youngest juror giving a reasoned explanation of why he believed it was murder, older cast members dismissed him as not having enough life experience - angering viewers.
What, how, and why?
The Jury: Murder Trial's youngest juror is 19-year-old student Oliver, who seems to have won over viewers with his clear thinking on the trial's evidence - but not so much his fellow jurors.
In Wednesday's episode where the prosecution questioned the defendant's story about why he had hit his wife with a hammer, Oliver felt convinced it must have been murder. In a discussion with the other jurors, he explained the parts of the defendant's answers that he didn't think rang true.
But one older juror told him: "You're looking at it too black and white."
Another juror, 43-year-old Jodie, told him: "Because you're young. I know I've been in your position. Because I hadn't educated myself to opinions."
Someone else agreed: "He's young, he hasn't actually lived a life."
Jodie was also shown talking to the cameras as she said: "Bless him, Ollie is the exact same age as my son. He's not long come out of school. I've had children, I've had jobs, I've got a mortgage, I've got all that experience that I hope will help me."
However, Oliver said: "I think people underestimate me. Although I am the youngest one there, I feel like my words do still have value. We're all entitled to our own opinions."
Viewers picked up on the way Oliver was being treated and were not impressed, as one person commented on X: "I knew they'd be patronising to Ollie." Someone else agreed: "Getting wound up by how patronising the others are being to Ollie."
Another viewer wrote: "This lot are so patronising saying a 19 year old can’t possibly know anything. Completely dismissing him because he’s young, how is that okay?"
Lots of viewers supported him as one person wrote: "#c4thejury making me comfortable the young are our future. Well done Ollie not backing down in the face of gammon and idiots. I mean ugh."
Someone else commented: "The 19 year old probably has the most sense," and another person agreed: "what have we learnt from this program, jury members should be under the age of 20....."
What else has been happening on The Jury: Murder Trial?
Viewers have been divided by the show's format and when it launched on Monday, while some viewers were gripped, others said they spotted flaws as they watched the jurors mull over the case.
“This is so false,” one posted on X. “The jury would be with other people, possibly on other juries, during breaks and are instructed not to discuss the trial like this. They are formulating opinions before hearing evidence. I've done jury service, it's not like this.”
Another asked: “Would a real jury stop every five minutes to discuss the case?” “This programme isn't showing the jury system as it is,” said someone else. “It's playing to a Whodunnit TV audience & making jury service look like a Big Brother experience.”
"As I expected. Just wannabes playing up for the camera," sniped someone else.
The Jury: Murder Trial concludes on Channel 4 at 9pm on Thursday.
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